A survey by the Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems Asssociation (EGCSA) has offered a data-driven snapshot of the current scrubber market.
EGCSA polled its membership, which includes industry heavyweights such as MAN, Alfa Laval, Wärtsilä and others, to come up with a total figure of 983 scrubbers that have either been installed already or are on order as of 31May, 2018.
The survey follows recent news of lucrative scrubber purchases including Wärtsilä's US$200M scrubber sale to a ‘major’ box shipper named by various media outlets as MSC in July, Star Bulk's June announcement that it is adding 24 scrubbers to its to fleet among others.
The EGCSA report offered some other insights. The majority, 63% of scrubber installations and orders have been retrofits, 59% of retrofits took place in Asian yards which also took on nearly 85% of new installations. Bulk carriers lead the industry with 28% of scrubber installations and orders, with tankers not far behind at 23%.
Ro-Ro vessels and other ferries, which EGCSA said made the industry's initial push into the scrubber market make up only 13% of the total, and cruise ships -- another early adopting market segment -- comprise 15% of the market.
EGCSA's survey also found that scrubbers are being fitted to more powerful engines.
"Until relatively recently the largest installed exhaust handling capacity has been for engine powers in the region of 25 to 30MW," the report said, noting the installation of a retrofitted hybrid scrubber on a 72MW container ship engine. "Large capacity scrubbers are not confined to retrofits as the maximum size new building installation is a hybrid system for a 65MW engine."
Open-loop scrubber systems make up the majority of installations and orders, with 988 of the 1561 individual scrubber towers installed or on order designed for open loop scrubbing.
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